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<journal-meta>
<journal-id journal-id-type="publisher">EGUsphere</journal-id>
<journal-title-group>
<journal-title>EGUsphere</journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="publisher">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
<abbrev-journal-title abbrev-type="nlm-ta">EGUsphere</abbrev-journal-title>
</journal-title-group>
<issn pub-type="epub"></issn>
<publisher><publisher-name>Copernicus Publications</publisher-name>
<publisher-loc>Göttingen, Germany</publisher-loc>
</publisher>
</journal-meta>
<article-meta>
<article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.5194/egusphere-2026-384</article-id>
<title-group>
<article-title>From basin-scale variability to regional coherence: emergence of a dominant common mode in reservoir storage dynamics in Catalonia</article-title>
</title-group>
<contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Serrat</surname>
<given-names>Carles</given-names>
<ext-link>https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9528-1938</ext-link>
</name>
<xref ref-type="aff" rid="aff1">
<sup>1</sup>
</xref>
</contrib>
</contrib-group><aff id="aff1">
<label>1</label>
<addr-line>Department of Physics, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Terrassa 08222, Spain</addr-line>
</aff>
<pub-date pub-type="epub">
<day>17</day>
<month>04</month>
<year>2026</year>
</pub-date>
<volume>2026</volume>
<fpage>1</fpage>
<lpage>19</lpage>
<permissions>
<copyright-statement>Copyright: &#x000a9; 2026 Carles Serrat</copyright-statement>
<copyright-year>2026</copyright-year>
<license license-type="open-access">
<license-p>This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit <ext-link ext-link-type="uri"  xlink:href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/</ext-link></license-p>
</license>
</permissions>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-384/">This article is available from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-384/</self-uri>
<self-uri xlink:href="https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-384/egusphere-2026-384.pdf">The full text article is available as a PDF file from https://egusphere.copernicus.org/preprints/2026/egusphere-2026-384/egusphere-2026-384.pdf</self-uri>
<abstract>
<p>Long-term records of reservoir storage provide an integrated observational view of regional hydrological variability in managed systems and are directly relevant for water-resource management and drought risk assessment at regional scale. Here we analyze daily records of stored water volume percentages for major reservoirs in Catalonia over the period 1960&amp;ndash;2026, using exclusively observational data provided by the Catalan Water Agency. After physically consistent preprocessing, we construct a set of annual metrics, including the annual mean stored volume percentage and the fraction of days below defined low-storage thresholds. Pairwise correlation analyses reveal a clear contrast between intra-basin and inter-basin behavior and show a pronounced increase in inter-basin synchronization after the late 1980s, particularly for low-storage and extreme drought metrics that are most relevant for water scarcity conditions. To assess whether this increased synchronization reflects emergent inter-basin coupling or the dominance of a common large-scale signal, we explicitly remove the leading regional mode of variability using a principal-component-based common-mode analysis applied to the annual reservoir metrics. After removal of this dominant mode, inter-basin correlations are strongly reduced in both early and late periods, and the apparent pre/post contrast is substantially weakened. The analysis provides robust observational evidence that inter-basin correlations strengthen after the late 1980s and that this change is largely captured by a single dominant regional common mode (PC1) in the annual reservoir metrics. Residual inter-basin structure beyond this leading mode is comparatively weaker and does not exhibit the same systematic pre/post amplification. These results indicate that reservoir systems that were historically only weakly coordinated now behave increasingly as a single regional system dominated by a common large-scale signal, particularly during drought-relevant conditions. This has direct implications for water management, as it limits the effectiveness of spatial diversification and inter-basin compensation strategies. No causal attribution is attempted; the results instead provide a quantitative observational baseline for future studies combining reservoir data with climatic and operational covariates.</p>
</abstract>
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